Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.

Dress has never been at all a straightforward business: so much subterranean interest and complex feeling attaches to it. As a topic ... it has a flowery head but deep roots in the passion. On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do. ... Ten minutes talk about clothes (except between perfect friends) tends to make everyone present either overbearing, guarded or touchy.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.